Coping Mechanism
by ConcreteGirl25
Summary: Don contemplates Charlie's words in Uncertainity Principle and learns a little about his brother.


I do not own Numb3rs.

After Don confronts Charlie about hiding behind P v. NP, Don contemplates Charlie's answer.

* * *

><p><em>"Please, understand, sometimes I can't choose what I work on. I can't follow through on a line of thinking just because I want to, or, or because it's needed. I have to work on what's in my head. And right now, this is what's in my head."<em>

* * *

><p>Don sat in his office at the FBI twirling a pen between his fingers while his brother's words kept echoing in his head along with the staccato of the chalk hitting the board. He remembered the look of pure frustration and need on his brother's face and it scared him. Charlie always had expressive eyes, like his mother always said, the eyes are the windows to the soul, but the raw emotion contained in those eyes made his heart ache for his only brother. He began to realize what Charlie really went through as a child.<p>

By the age of three, Charlie was doing four digit multiples in his head just because he sat near his mother as she taught Don the basics of it while he was doing homework. While Don struggled to remember all of the steps and write it out on paper, Charlie could spew the answer as soon as he was asked it. This led to Charlie being evaluated, tested, and tutored long before most kids learned to tie their shoes or how to add and subtract. Charlie took it all in stride even when he started high school at the age of nine and graduated just a few days after his thirteenth birthday. Don was always annoyed about how his father and mother asked him to watch after the young genius when it should have been a time for Don to hang out with friends during school and not worry about where his younger brother was, or the cat calls he got from his friends about the small child. While Don protected his brother from the teens who took advantage of the child, it distanced him from his only sibling. Don began to see his brother as the reasons for all of his frustrations and gladly jumped on the opportunity to play baseball at a college in Northern California just to distance himself from his clingy and fragile brother.

However, he realized he went through the normal trials of his childhood and teen years. Sure he had a mathematical genius for a little brother, but he made friends, played with kids his age, learned when it was time to participate in certain events and when to stop, and how to control his impulsive behavior. Charlie did not have this. Younger kids could not understand the way Charlie's mind and thought process was like. Heck, even most adults couldn't, but adults had experience and can learn to adapt to different people. Charlie was shunned by his peers but he also couldn't befriend older teens and adults. His mind was still childlike and so was his behavior so he matured quickly so he could fit in a niche with older people. But he was still a child and held onto those qualities and kept them throughout his life as a sort of an expression of his childhood.

Another thing Charlie wasn't allowed to learn was to cope. With a mind like his, most people treated him as an adult for no child could contain that much knowledge without being mature. So Charlie did not learn how to deal with certain situations and stress. He was taught instead to use numbers and that's what he did. Instead of finding a way to vent and cope his feelings, Charlie immersed and lost himself in numbers. He did not learn impulse control and therefore numbers took control of his life, running away with his thoughts until he can only do the one algorithm or the one equation that his mind has latched on.

With a sigh, Don stood up and left his office before heading to his car and beginning the drive toward the Eppes' family home. How must it feel to have your mind invaded by something and you subconsciously are unable to do anything else? How did it feel to have all those emotions bottled in your head with no way to express them except for an unsolvable problem? What did it feel like to know your mother is dying, but not be able to pull yourself away and confront your emotions and the emotions of others? Maybe that is why their mom was the only one to truly understand Charlie's mind. She knew how hard it must be for Charlie and how numbers were his only coping mechanism. Maybe that how she felt when she played piano, completely absorbed nothing but herself and the music in her head. Was that the reason she pushed the boys to take lessons and was proud when Charlie's gift was discovered? Because someone else was like her?

Clenching the steering wheel tighter, Don realized what life must be like for someone who was extraordinary, gifted. It set you apart, made you different in a way that could help others or let you do things no one else can do. However, it was also a curse. Something that pulled you in and put you on a level no one can understand, made you grow up before your time. It wasn't his brother's fault he was born that way, and it was nothing they could change. He needed people to understand and when they couldn't he turned to the one thing that he did understand. Numbers was his life and always will be. Don was just going to have to accept it, even if it angered and worried him and his father to death when Charlie was in that state. It was all he knew, and Don could cope with that. He could learn.

* * *

><p>"<em>I've decided to give up P v. NP."<em>

Or maybe Charlie was completely different then he thought. Maybe he could learn the things he missed while growing up…

* * *

><p>Ok this just really turned into a rambling thought but hopefully you enjoyed it. Review if you want to.<p> 


End file.
